I am so serious on this one! This morning when I took off up the road with no where in particular to go - my legs felt so good under me. I can actually feel the muscles now. Sometimes I try to imagine just how it is that they work together like such a well oiled machine. And sometimes I concentrate on trying to really feel that fraction of a second that both feet are off the ground at the same time!  As I am learning my limits and pushing them properly at the same time, I really do feel stronger. I thought about that this morning while I knocked out 3 miles at about an 11 min pace. That's not too fast for others, but I've come a long ways. 2 Corinthians 10:12 says that it is not wise to measure ourselves by others. I do think we should measure ourselves to His measure - none of us are all that great if we do that! Who can match His stride?!?  But I can measure myself up against where I came from. I have only been running a little more than two years and I've come a long...

Runners know what an important role the diet plays in fueling the run. For me, it really is the pasta dinner the night before. You kind of have to experiment with a few things to find out what works for your body. And we all know how rough finding out what the no-no's are! That can mess up a really good run! (lol- runners know what I am talking about!) But I don't think that what we eat is the guts of the matter. What really fuels the run is found when you top that huge hill that was just taken in stride, or you shave a few seconds off a PR, or you get that medal in your age group at a race...all summed up in one word: success. That's really the "stuff" behind why we continue. Think about how discouraging it would be to run at the same pace every single day and never be able to get any faster ever - or if the same hill kicks you in the butt every day and you never conquer it...discouraging to say the least. I think this is true in many aspects of our live...

I have decided this one 5 mile route is my favorite. I get some pretty level running in before I turn to go up one of the biggest hills you'll find here in Norman, OK! Then at the top of the hill I swing through a neighborhood and over past a real pretty little pond to a street named, "Horizon View." I am not sure why it's named that as you cannot see a horizon from there at all! But then I double back and it's a nice morning run. The hill and I have something personal going on! I always look at it from the corner and point to myself and say, "I'm taking you down today!" as I head toward it! (Sometimes on the weekends I swear I can hear it calling out a challenge for me! lol!) Monday when I got to that hill, I was caught up in my thoughts and it came so easy it even surprised me. I realized I had taken the hill and never broke stride and my legs felt so good under me! But that success came at a cost. It's taken 2 years of training to get to ...